(NNPA)–I have been trying to figure out how there can be any discussion of registering Muslims due to alleged national security concerns, when it is documented that the major source of terrorism in the United States since 9/11 has been White supremacists groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been a major source of information documenting myriad right-wing terrorist attacks, though little mainstream attention has gone to this phenomenon. Just recently several right-wingers in Oregon were acquitted of an ARMED occupation of federal property. This was not civil disobedience or standard protest, but an armed action.

In the late 1960s/early 1970s, there were many Black activists who worried that, in the face of some alleged crisis proclaimed by the U.S. government, African Americans would be placed into concentration camps. The mainstream political establishment declared that we were paranoid. While it was true, they would say, that Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans had been imprisoned in 1942 as an alleged security threat during World War II, we were subjected to repeated arguments that this would never happen again; what happened to the Japanese had been an aberration. The fact that Native Americans had been locked up on reservations was conveniently ignored.

Fast forward to the 2016 presidential elections. Republican candidates, including, but not limited to, now President-elect Donald Trump, began making suggestions regarding the registering and possible interning of Muslims in the U.S. The rationale: alleged national security concerns.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro died the week the San Francisco 49ers were scheduled to play the Miami Dolphins. Before his death, there was a dispute over a T-shirt with his depiction.

Back during the preseason Colin Kaepernick, the 49ers quarterback known for his pre-game national anthem protest, wore a T-shirt featuring a meeting between Fidel Castro and Malcolm X. (Background: In 1959 Castro overthrew the U.S. backed dictator and promised Cuba will have no more dictators and free elections. In 1960 Castro gave a speech at the U.N. denouncing the United States. During this U.N. visit Castro stayed in a Harlem hotel. That’s when Castro and Malcolm X were introduced. The photos have more symbolism than historical significance.)

During a teleconference, a Miami reporter, a Cuban exile, reminded Kaepernick of his preseason apparel and asked how he could protest oppression then don a T-shirt featuring an oppressor.

Kaepernick said he wore a Malcolm X shirt.

The reporter said Castro was also depicted.

Kaepernick explained he believed in Malcolm X’s ideology and his meeting with Castro showed Malcolm’s open mind and interest in international affairs.

But the reporter only wanted to know if Kaepernick supported Castro and his oppression, Kaepernick said, “I’m not talking about Fidel Castro’s oppression.”

The reporter wrote in his own op-ed, then “in the next breath Kaepernick, born in Milwaukee, Wis., explains to me, the guy born in Havana, how great Castro really is.”

(NNPA)—The election of Donald J. Trump signals very dark days ahead. Not for the American people, of course, but for our nation’s enemies and adversaries in the Middle East.

The American people turned out to the polls in record numbers for the election, and they delivered the future President Trump an undeniable and strong mandate to lead. With the Republican Party in control of both the House and the Senate, Trump is poised to avoid the gridlock that has perpetually plagued Washington, and actually get things done.

It’s a new day in America, and we should expect tremendous changes when it comes to how America approaches conflict in the Middle East. President Obama withdrew from the region, minimizing American power and diminishing our much-needed presence and leadership. Trump will bring that indispensable leadership back to the Middle East, and the world will be better for it.

Notably, the presidency of Trump signals a rekindling of the historic ties that have bound America to its closest ally and the only true democracy in the region, the Jewish state of Israel.

Trump has a strong affinity for the Jewish people. It’s not just politics—it’s personal. His daughter Ivanka is a convert to Judaism, and his Orthodox Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner has been a trusted advisor on the campaign trail. Trump has spoken with pride about his Jewish grandchildren.

After an abysmal 2016 election season, there was one bright spot for Democrats: the state of North Carolina.

Despite all the battleground states won by President-elect Donald Trump, Democrats made gains in North Carolina down-ballot races.

Now that North Carolina will have a Democratic governor and a left-leaning state Supreme Court, political analysts are looking at the state to ascertain why it did not fully get swept up in the Trump mania.

Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, joined Roland Martin on NewsOne Now to discuss the rise of “Fusion Politics” in the South and how the Moral Monday movement should be duplicated around the country.

Barber explained the multi-racial, multi-denominational coalition created an “indigenously led” movement focused on state legislation composed of individuals who are deeply moral, deeply Constitutional, anti-racist, anti-poverty, pro-justice, and pro-labor.

Barber said “Fusion coalition pulls people together––not so much left and right and red and blue.” The individuals who form the coalition are gathered around “key issues, moral issues that are rooted in constitutional morality and religious morality.

“You have to take on the heresy of White Evangelicalism, you have to find a way to converse with people regardless of party,” Barber said.

Over the course of three years, Rev. Barber and his supporters have brought people from varying backgrounds together “around a five-point agenda [which includes] economics, education, healthcare, environmental justice, criminal justice reform, [and] equal protection under the law.”

How can individuals who seem to be on opposite sides of so many different issues come together to form a sustainable political force? Rev. Barber explained there are three questions central to finding common ground and combining opposing views. They are as follows: Are the policies implemented by elected officials constitutionally consistent, morally defensible, and economically sound?

Barber said, “In doing that, it changed the conversation. People thought we were foolish because we were losing the vote, but we were looking at a long-term, not just a short-term [strategy].”

As a result of building the coalition in North Carolina: “The Governor’s spot was taken by progressives, the AG, the Secretary of State, the Auditor, and a Black brother [Judge Michael Morgan] won a seat on the Supreme Court [by a] 300,000 vote margin … and won 76 counties in North Carolina,” Barber said.

He added, “That’s what we’re going to have to do throughout the country [and] throughout the South.”

Watch Roland Martin and Rev. William Barber discuss the impact “Fusion Politics” has had on North Carolina in the video clip above.

(NNPA)—Professor Deva Woodly teaches political science at the New School for Social Research in New York. During a recent talk, she shared that trust in our nation’s institutions is at an all-time low. That is, perhaps, why that man who currently holds the title of president-elect was able to prevail over someone far more qualified in the November election. Using Gallup Poll data from June 2016, Professor Woodly notes that the military is our nation’s most trusted institution—73 percent trust them, while our Congress is the least trusted with only 7 percent support. Fifty-six percent of us trust the police, 41 percent trust the church, just 36 percent support the president, and only 23 percent trust organized labor or the criminal justice system. One in five trusts television news or newspapers. In a nutshell, it does not appear that we trust anybody!

This lack of trust results in a lack of involvement in civil society. If you don’t trust the church, how involved will you be in it? If you don’t trust your union, will you do much more than pay your dues? Only two in five trust the medical profession—do you believe your doctors? Just one in four of us trust banks. If we don’t trust institutions, do we trust each other? And if we don’t trust each other, how do we come together to organize, to resist the corrosiveness of the callous, racist, misogynistic leadership that Trump offers our nation.

Washington, D.C.—The National Black Church Initiative, faith-based coalitions of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African Americans, say the blame for the election of Donald Trump lay on the shoulders of the first Black President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.

Reverend Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, states, “These six reasons that we spell out and give an acute analysis of the moral, psychological underpinning of why the poor did not vote and the middle class Blacks like Angela Rye tried to defend both a president who forgot he was a Black man, and tried to elect a woman who was the wrong woman for the Presidency, and who was draped in moral contradictions and possessed a Biblical Eve tenacity of trying to negotiate with the Devil. Hillary oversaw the DNC who castrated the Christian church for our views, lied and undermined the Bernie Sanders campaign and stole money from the poor Haitians. Now Ms. Rye and others find themselves trying to explain how Donald Trump got elected. Here’s what we know:”

1) The lack of action against the killing of African American males

Every Black mother witnessed how impudent Obama’s Justice Department, ran by his White friends from Harvard who were ill-equipped and understaffed to deal with the deep racial hatred felt by low income Whites, who could not find jobs to pay them because they were White. She also witnessed how they gunned down her son who was the sparkle of her eyes and the promise of our people.

A recent extensive report by Allegheny County stated what most of us already knew. The wrong people are in jail, and most are Black.

According to a “Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Improving incarceration Policies and Practices in Allegheny County” report released recently by the University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics’ Criminal Justice Task Force.

With all the violent crime occurring throughout Allegheny County and the country as a whole the vast majority, 65 to 80 percent of the people in jail are nonviolent Blacks.

Blacks comprise just 13 percent of Allegheny yet 49 percent of the jail population, and those numbers are much higher in other major urban areas where the Black populations are higher.

Then add to that the number of people in jail or pleading guilty because judges allow cancelations of trials because the police don’t show, or a witness doesn’t show or whatever. If the trial is scheduled at a certain time it should be mandatory that police or anyone connected to it show up or the case should be tossed out. Remember every time a defendant shows up he or she must pay their lawyer. One lady said she showed up nine times and each time it was rescheduled because someone from law enforcement didn’t show, so the judge rescheduled, and each time she had to pay their lawyer $500 or more.

“Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called states?”

— James Wilson, delegate to theConstitutional Convention of 1787

When the United States of America was born, emphasis was far greater on “States” than “United.” Citizens of the newly formed nation identified first and foremost as “Pennsylvanians” or “Georgians,” for example, and as “Americans” only as a distant second. Our method for selecting a chief executive originally was devised to serve interests of each state, rather than each citizen.

The idea that all citizens of the nation should have an equal say in electing the highest office in the land was far from the minds of the framers of the Constitution in 1787. The Constitution did not specify who could vote; that was left to the states and most granted suffrage only to white male adult property owners. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention considered election of the President by Congress, election by state governors, election by state legislatures and direct election by voters.

Direct election was considered, though not seriously, and twice rejected. It can be argued that the framers of the Constitution were far more concerned about electing a qualified President than a popular one. The Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters came up with the Electoral College as a compromise.

Today’s Electoral College would be as baffling and unforeseen to the Framers of the Constitution as Twitter or the Mars Exploration Rover.

Over the next two centuries, the United States grew to cherish democracy as an American ideal. As the right to vote was expanded and the principle of “one person, one vote” overtook the nation, the justification for the Electoral College diminished. Five times the winner of the popular vote has been denied the presidency because of the Electoral College – twice in the last 16 years.

Today, one Wyoming voter has roughly the same vote power as four New York voters. Minnesota has 22,000 more people than Colorado and one more electoral vote, while Wisconsin has 33,000 more people than Minnesota and the same number of electoral votes.

According to a study conducted during the 2012 presidential election, the candidates conducted two-thirds of their public events in September and October in just three states — Ohio, Florida and Virginia. At the same time, the candidates failed to hold a single public event in 40 states. Overall, campaign events and advertising took place in only 12 states.

As a nation that cherishes the “one person, one vote” ideal, we should find these facts offensive.

Abolishing the Electoral College would require the consent of the legislatures of the very states that benefit from this imbalance in power. In the current political climate, chances are almost nil.

However, the Constitution does not specify how each state must apportion its electoral votes. If states agreed to award their votes to the winner of the national popular vote, the anti-democratic influence of the Electoral College would be eliminated.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted into law in 10 states and the District of Columbia, representing 165 electoral votes. It will take effect when enacted by states with 105 more electoral votes.

Public opinion surveys consistently find solid majorities in favor of eliminating the Electoral College. Even our current president-elect, the most recent beneficiary of its anti-democratic effect, has called it “a disaster for a democracy.”

While the road to actual elimination appears long and fraught, eliminating its anti-democratic influence appears to be within our grasp.

Marc Morial is the president and executive director of the National Urban League.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has come under fire again after revealing to reporters that it would be “hypocritical” of him to vote and that it did not matter who won the 2016 presidential election.

Sports Illustrated reported the embattled QB told members of the media: “I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression. I’m not going to show support for that system. And to me, the oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.”

Kaepernick––already embroiled in controversy over his National Anthem protest––sparked another uproar by opting out of the nation’s political process.

On Monday’s edition of NewsOne Now, Roland Martin and his panel of guests discussed the NFL star’s comments and how important voting is for the African-American community.

A. Scott Bolden, Attorney and former Chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party, said Kaepernick “should be ripped about it” and agreed with ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith’s remarks about the matter.

Bolden quoted Smith as saying: “You can not protest what’s wrong with America and then not vote to change it. And people have died, people have protested, people have suffered for that symbol of freedom, which is the right to vote.”

Lauren Victoria Burke, Political Analyst and Writer for NBCBLK, stood in opposition of the pushback against Kaepernick and said, “I don’t think there is a big problem with him not voting and waging his protest regarding police brutality.”

The NewsOne Now panelist referenced the Walter Scott police shooting case and said, “I don’t think that you can draw a direct line in some of these cases from voting to stopping somebody from getting killed in that way.

“If you can make the argument that Eric Garner and Michael Brown and these people would be alive because we voted – I don’t know if I can make that direct line,” she said.

Burke, who was not advocating against voting, later stated Kaepernick “not voting doesn’t delete his protest [and] doesn’t make it less.”

Watch Roland Martin and the NewsOne Now panel discuss Colin Kaepernick’s decision to opt out of the 2016 election in the video clip above.

Do you believe Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest over police brutality was diminished by the NFL player not exercising his right to vote?

New York Times columnist Charles Blow speaking at a CNN Media conference for the presidential election in October 2008.(Source: Joe Kohen/Getty Images/File)

Ladies and gents, once again I give you one of the few columnists I will give the cut and paste treatment in the age of trump: Charles Blow.

“Last week when Donald Trump began his so-called Thank You Tour in Cincinnati, he had yet another opportunity to be magnanimous and conciliatory, to step beyond the division and acrimony of his campaign and into the unity and healing necessary to be president of a strained nation.

As is his wont, he declined, instead gloating and boasting, playing to the minority of American voters who chose him, relishing his own impenitence.

He is choosing to push America further apart rather than bring it closer together.

And be clear: It is not the job of the defiant to conform to a future president who makes them completely uncomfortable. The burden of unity lies with Trump, not his detractors.

“Just wait and see.” “Give him a chance.” But what if what you’ve already seen is so beyond the pale that it’s irrevocable? What if Trump has already squandered more chances than most of us will ever have?

What if Trump has shown himself beyond doubt and with absolute certainty to be a demagogue and bigot and xenophobe and has given space and voice to concordant voices in the country and in his emerging Legion of Doom cabinet? In that reality, resistance isn’t about mindless obstruction by people blinded by the pain of ideological defeat or people gorging on sour grapes. To the contrary, resistance then is an act of radical, even revolutionary, patriotism. Resistance isn’t about damaging the country, but protecting it.

There is no Electoral College clause that blunts ferocious opposition to the demeaning of women and racial, ethnic and religious minorities in this country; there is no Election Day reset on the coddling of white supremacy.

Furthermore, the emergence of Donald Trump as a political figure has threatened to kill many of the ideals that we hold dear: decency and decorum, inclusion and empathy, truth and facts themselves.

Trump and his agents of idiocracy are now engaged in an all-out crusade to exaggerate the scope of his victory, rewrite racial history, justify their vendettas and hostilities and erase the very distinction between true and false.

The Trump campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, barked back: “Do you think I ran a campaign where White supremacists had a platform? You’re going to look me in the face and tell me that?”

“It did. Kellyanne, it did,” said Palmieri. Yes Kellyanne, that is exactly what you did and no amount of personal outrage about being called out on it is going to rewrite that history. Furthermore, everyone who sees you should say that to your face at every opportunity.

Resistance is not about some sort of clairvoyant condemnation of acts yet uncommitted, but rather about the resilience of memory, the rigidity of morality and the depth of wounds.

The truest measure of a leader is as much about how he or she attains power as how he or she wields it; while the latter is yet to be determined, the former has been revealed in devastating clarity.

A Pew Research Poll released last month found that “voters’ ‘grades’ for the way Trump conducted himself during the campaign are the lowest for any victorious candidate in 28 years.” The report continued: “For the first time in Pew Research Center post-election surveys, voters give the losing candidate higher grades than the winner.”

Furthermore, as Nate Silver responded to one of Conway’s tweets, “Trump will soon become the first president who failed to win a majority of the vote either in the general election or in his primary,” meaning the Republican primaries. He added: “That is to say, since 1972. Primaries weren’t widespread before that. 45/46% of the vote can go a long way under the right circumstances.”

And there are disturbing signs about how a Trump administration will conduct itself, from the early diplomatic blunders that signal a worrisome break in the continuity of protocol, to his team nursing vendettas and continuing to dangle the threat of jail in front of his opponents. Last week Conway appeared to waffle on whether Trump or a federal agency during his term might still pursue prosecution of Clinton; the Trump lackey Corey Lewandowski forthrightly said of the executive editor of The New York Times: “He should be in jail.”

“One thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts; they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way, it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true.” She continued: “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.” Folks, Dimwit-ism is a disease easily spread and denigrators of the absolutism of truth are its vectors.

This is why resistance isn’t only principled, but essential and even existential.

We are not in an ordinary post-election period of national unity and rapprochement. We are facing the potential abrogation of fundamental American ideals. We stand at the precipice, staring into an abyss that grows darker by the day.” [Source]

]]>http://newpittsburghcourieronline.com/2016/12/06/field-negro-blow-at-his-best/feed/0charles-blowrtmsbroadusNew York Times columnist Charles Blow speaking at a CNN Media conference for the presidential election in October 2008. Source: Joe Kohen/Getty Images